


time flies (time dies)

by evillittlethings



Category: Timeless (TV 2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, F/M, Self-Harm in a way, Soulmate-Identifying Timers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-05
Updated: 2017-04-05
Packaged: 2018-10-15 00:32:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 828
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10546976
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/evillittlethings/pseuds/evillittlethings
Summary: Prompt: Someone purposely breaks their soulmate clock so they can be with someone they fell in love with that isn’t their soulmate.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I’ve been struggling with the second half of chapter 2 of “butterflies around a flame” and I couldn’t stop thinking about this prompt so VOILA. Enjoy :)
> 
> Title comes from the musical RENT.

His clock is still at 7 years 5 months and 18 days when he first sees her. He can almost pinpoint the exact minute it’s on despite the long sleeves that hide his clock from view. After all, he’d spent his teen years studying it, watching it tick down, second by second.

His timer is at 7 years, 5 months, 18 days, 2 hours, 5 minutes and 32 seconds.

Hers hits zero.

He doesn’t know it at first. All he knows is her smile, her eyes, her light. It radiates from her very core, warming his skin and filling his life with the glow of possibility.

Two minutes after meeting and she’s asked him out for coffee, smooth words caressing the deeply hidden parts of him that yearns for exactly this. He already can’t picture his life without her.

Three weeks later and they’re on their fifth date at a high class restaurant where the food is worth its weight in gold. A candle softly flickers between them as she quietly admits that he’s her soulmate. Her smile is hopeful; the fear in her eyes is palpable.

His stomach drops and he imagines that he can feel the ticking of the timer embedded in his forearm. The black numbers counting down to an event he no longer wants. He doesn’t need a soulmate when he has her.

“I’m in love with you,” is his response.

Relief colours her cheeks his favourite shade of red as a large grin spreads across her face.

He kisses her sweetly on the lips at the door to her apartment. She invites him in, a come-hither smile. Instead, he goes home.

That night he digs a sharp kitchen knife into the tattoo-like skin. Red blood wells as he slashes deep across his timer. It stops at a barely legible 7 years 4 months and 29 days. The hours, minutes, seconds are irrelevant.

His arm no longer ticks and his sense of relief numbs the pain. He stitches the cut himself.

The next time she invites him in, he says yes.

The years pass.

An unknown girl at the bakery becomes his girlfriend, becomes his wife.

A little girl is born from their love. They name her Iris and, from the moment she comes into the world, he calls her his “duga”. His rainbow.

His life is complete in a way he had never expected to experience. An immeasurable amount of love fills his days and nights with pure joy. He knows that she is the love of his life; her soul is the mate to his own, no matter what the scar on his arm may have to say.

He should have known that it would not last.

A name heard in passing.

A dead wife, a dead daughter.

A broken heart.

He spends his days sitting by their graves, an unopened bottle of vodka in his hand. He doesn’t open it. He never opens it. Yet he holds onto it tightly like a crutch.

A beautiful woman, somewhere in her late forties, sits beside him one day, a few short months after their deaths.

She talks to him of an impossible future. A life filled with time-travel, red death and sweet revenge. Worst of all, she offers him hope.

He looks at her like she’s one of the worms currently eating away at the only real love he’s ever known. He spits and hates, and still she comes back. Day after day.

She tells him stories, of the things the two of them would accomplish together. It’s when she utters “Rittenhouse” that he finally starts to believe.

Handing him a journal, she plants a loving kiss on his cheek and walks away.

He meets her again two years later, amidst the blazing carcass of the Hindenburg. She’s roughly fifteen years younger than when he saw her last, but there was no mistaking her deep brown eyes. They’re filled with fright, with apprehension, but they are the same eyes he had taken solace in.

He grabs her firmly by the arm, pulling her closer so she can hear him above the cacophony of death. Her sleeve rides up to expose that her timer is at zero. She looks at it with horrified wonder.

A harsh “no” escapes her lips.

That’s when he knows. It hits him like a bullet to his barely-beating heart.

A woman by the grave of his wife and child, first appearing 7 years, 5 months, 18 days, 2 hours, 5 minutes and 32 seconds after he had met the love of his life.

A younger version of that woman, gasping as her timer hits zero right in front of him.

They lock eyes.

On the periphery of his field of vision he spots the soldier quickly approaching and drawing his gun.

He doesn’t think, simply grabs her and pulls her in front of him, using her as a human shield. He doesn’t need a soulmate.

He already had one.

 


End file.
